Aftershocks
by Mijan
Summary: Jim Kirk feels the aftershocks of a command decision. (Kirk/McCoy, established relationship.)


**Notes:** I wrote this a while ago, but neglected to post it at the time because, between finishing writing and getting it beta'd, there was an earthquake in New Zealand, and I didn't want to offend people. I posted on my Livejournal a few weeks later, but I forgot to post it here. So, here's an old fic for your current enjoyment.

Also, this is slash. I know, I know... most of my fics on this site are friendship or bromance, but I do also write slash. There is no sexual content in this fic. It's just a deeply caring established relationship between two men. If you don't like slash, that's fine. Go read my bromance fics and ignore this one. Cheers!

*.&.*

**Aftershocks**

The door to Leonard McCoy's quarters slid open, and Jim Kirk slipped inside, dragging his feet.

It was dark in the the room. The only lights were the faint glow from the computer terminal at Bones' desk and the vivid green-blue reflecting from the planet below through the small viewport. Jim knew Bones' quarters intimately enough that he could have walked through the room without any light. It was an achingly familiar place. It felt like Bones, smelled like Bones. But the room was too quiet, too empty.

"Lights," Jim whispered, his voice harsh and tight. "Twenty percent." The lights came up, bright enough to see, and dim enough not to hurt. His head was aching miserably. It had been too long since he'd slept. He'd spent the last day and a half pretending to be busy on the bridge until Spock had all but pried him out of the Captain's chair because he'd exceeded the maximum work cycle. So he'd gone back to sickbay to spend a sleepless night in a chair, returning to the bridge again when Alpha shift began. He'd performed his duties in a daze, with his body aching for sleep but his brain refusing to surrender. That didn't matter right now.

Jim took another step forward into Bones' quarters, allowing the door to slide shut behind him.

Bones kept his personal space clean and organized, and decorated only with those things that were most important important to him. A neat, tidy catalogue of his life, displayed on shelves and in holo frames: his daughter, his parents, his medical license, and all of his diplomas. He didn't keep too many random trinkets or souvenirs. He had some scary-looking medical antiques that he occasionally threatened to use on captains who missed their quarterly physicals. The quilt his grandmother had made was folded neatly on the couch beneath the viewport. Everything was just as Bones liked it.

Jim liked his quarters a bit more cluttered. After too many years of never quite feeling like he had a real home, he'd found that he liked odd, quirky, and downright haphazard things around his quarters. He didn't have any pictures or portraits on his walls or shelves, though. He figured his memories of the things and people he cared about were strong enough, and having holos of them just felt... weird. So instead, he had things. Momentos. Souvenirs. Old paper books. Random shit that reminded him of random things, and just a bit of chaos. Squishy, multicolored pillows on his sofa. A jar of sand from the beach near the Academy. Some blue gum eucalyptus leaves from the trees on the trails behind the Presidio, a tiny plastic statue from Chinatown, and a pebble from Mars. His shoes lying all over the floor, just so Bones could tell him to put them away before he tripped over them and broke his neck. Still, his favorite addition to his quarters was Bones.

As per regulation, all senior officers had their own space. Officially, Bones was just his best friend, so there was no thought to either of them actually giving up their quarters. Some nights, Bones was waiting for Jim in the Captain's quarters after a stressful day on the bridge, ready with an affectionate lecture to remind Jim to _take care of yourself, you reckless sonofabitch._ Other times, Jim was already ensconced in the CMO's quarters when Bones got off his duty shift, with the intent of helping ease the tense knots out of the doctor's shoulders after Bones had spent a long day in surgery. During the day, they were the Captain and the Chief Medical Officer. After hours, they were... well... Jim and Bones. Whatever that meant. It was okay, because they'd never let their relationship - complicated and undefinable though it was - interfere with their duty.

It hadn't interfered yesterday, either.

Jim took a deep breath as he pressed forward into the living section of the quarters, feet treading familiar steps to the viewport. For the first six months of their mission, Bones had stubbornly kept the viewport covered. The man had actually put up a ridiculous set of _curtains_ - no idea where he'd gotten them - as if he could pretend that it was a simple window, not a starship viewport holding back the vacuum of space with nothing more than a few inches of transparent aluminum. Finally, while they had been doing a scientific survey of the most beautiful nebula Jim had thought could possibly exist, he'd convinced Bones to pull back the curtains and look outside. Bones had seen the vivid and elegant swirl of gases, dancing their cosmic waltz to the thrum of the universe as gravity pulled it inwards, falling towards the inevitable birth of a newborn star. They'd had sex - _made love, you asshole_ - on the couch underneath the viewport, in full view of the nebula. Bones had never covered the viewport again.

Jim could almost hear the moans of pleasure, the rapid breaths, the sweat on flushed skin from all those months ago... which now seemed hauntingly similar to the groans of pain, the shallow respiration, and the deathly pallor of clammy sweat.

Jim leaned against the wall, looking out the viewport at the planet turning lazily below. The planet had looked so innocent. Not a member of the Federation, but an ally. They'd requested help after an earthquake had damaged two major cities along the coast of the northern continent. The ground was still unstable, but they'd needed medical staff to help set up a field hospital to treat the casualties because the largest hospital in the city had collapsed.

Bones was supposed to be in the field hospital. He would have been safe there, with the field hospital's construction of lightweight, flexible, and strong alloys and polymers. But no, he'd gone back into the main hospital building to treat casualties on site - those who were too unstable to be moved without treatment.

Jim had ordered him to go.

He would have gone anyway, Jim knew. In fact, when he'd contacted the ship with the status update, Jim knew that Bones was essentially demanding permission to go. Jim could still hear the conversation ringing in his ears.

_"Captain, one of the rescue teams found a group of survivors in the main building on the hospital campus. They've evacuated some of them, but three of them need treatment before we can move them."_

They used ranks and titles for formal communication. It was one of those things that let them know when they were conversing within the demands of duty. _"Can we evacuate them by transporter, Doctor McCoy?"_

_"I don't think so. They're too unstable. The readings I got back from the rescue team aren't pretty. Beaming them out would probably kill two of them, and possibly the third."_

Jim had hesitated for a moment, staring at the comm panel. _"Send in a team of medics to get them."_

_"They need a real doctor, Jim."_ His tone revealed just a hint of desperation, and the urgency of a personal appeal. _"I'm the only one available, and we're running out of time anyway."_

Jim had clenched his teeth in indecision for a moment, before nodding, even though Bones couldn't see the gesture. _"Then go in and take care of them."_

_"Aye, Captain."_

_"And Bones? Be careful in there."_

There had been an amused snort over the comm link. _"I'll remind you of that next time you go gallivanting into a crisis." _

Jim had smiled and closed the comm link.

A half-hour later, an aftershock had torn across the city.

Five minutes after that, Jim had been in the transporter room, watching the filthy, bloody, dying body of his best friend materialize on the transporter pad. The rest of the crumbling hospital building collapsed seconds later. Bones had been conscious... just barely. Bleary eyes, rasping breath, and the whispered name, _"Jim..." _

At least, that's what Jim thought he'd said.

That weak voice, the almost-formed name on Bones' lips would haunt Jim's dreams for a long time, almost as much as the way the man's body had sagged against the stretcher as his bloodstained hand had gone limp in Jim's grasp. Jim had felt something in his chest go icy at the sight, and he held tight to Bones' hand until one of the medics had to physically pull him away. The medics had pushed the stretcher through the doors of sickbay, leaving Jim with silence ringing in his ears, and a sickening sensation in his chest, like his own heart had stopped.

And now, the silence in Bones' quarters was adding to the deep chill working its way through his gut. It felt dark and haunted. And the planet below, visible through the vacuum of space outside the viewport, would haunt him for a long time to come, too. The planet, like Jim, was still rattling with the aftershocks of the events of yesterday morning that had ravaged them both.

Jim tore his gaze from the viewport and glanced back at the holos on Bones' walls and shelves. All the neat, succinct snapshots of his life. His family back on Earth. His diplomas. Even a picture of the damned farmhouse he'd grown up in. There were no pictures of them together, none of Jim and Bones. It was his own fault, Jim knew. It had seemed too fucking _domesticated_, like a family portrait or some shit like that. The very idea of it made him feel awkward. Jim had insisted, when Bones had mentioned it, that _we're together now, Bones. We don't need a picture of it._

Now, there was a blank spot on the wall that was screaming to be filled with that stupid portrait of them together, and Jim couldn't look at it any longer. He stared back out the viewport, unable to think anymore, and too numb to feel.

The planet spun below.

"Jim, are you going to come to bed?"

Jim startled briefly, then let his shoulders slump, just a bit, before slowly turning around to look at the friend he'd come so close to losing. He'd figured Bones would have been asleep in the bedroom, having been released from sickbay only a couple of hours ago. But he was definitely awake now, and was leaning on the doorframe with his good arm; the other arm was still in an immobilizer. There were ugly, greenish-yellow bruises on his cheekbone and jaw, too deep to fade quickly, even with treatment. He was favoring his left leg, and slouching tiredly on his feet.

"I didn't want to wake you up."

Bones pressed his mouth into a skeptical line. "I call horse shit. Hey, look at me. I'm okay."

"You're not okay. It's not okay."

Bones shook his head. "No, Jim. _I'm_ fine. _You're_ not okay. We all made it back. You need to let it go."

"It's kinda hard to let it go. You almost died." He took a tentative step away from the viewport, towards Bones. "I ordered you to go in there. I should have ordered another scan of the area for tectonic stability first. I should have been down there with you. I should have -"

"You should take off your shoes and get your ass into the bedroom," Bones said so flatly that Jim almost felt like he'd been slapped. He gaped, wordlessly, until Bones rolled his eyes and took an unsteady step forward. His tone was less irritated when he spoke again, but it still sounded like a lecture. "You did your job, and I did mine. And you know full well that if you hadn't told me to go, I was going anyway. I'm a doctor; it's what I do. I'm also a Starfleet officer. Risk is part of the game. Nobody knows that better than you do, so don't take that away from me."

"I... I just..." Jim didn't really have a response for that, and he stared back at Bones, feeling lost.

Then, Bones' lips quirked in what almost looked like a grin. It was an exhausted smile, but it seemed real. "Come on, Jim. You hate it when I fuss after you've gotten hurt. Same deal, here."

Jim tried to smile, but couldn't. "You've never ordered me into danger."

"That's not my job," he said softly. "It's yours. And you did it well, kid." Jim tried to interrupt, but Bones stopped him with a look. "Listen, I'm sure we're going to hash it out tomorrow -"

"Great," Jim said with a grimace.

Bones rolled his eyes. "You'll go all self-deprecating on me, and it'll end with me lecturing you about feeling guilty and the burden of command and reassuring you that you _made the right call_. But for now..." He blew out an exasperated breath. "I'm okay. The other guys in the building all made it. The rest of the landing party got out okay. And you haven't slept in almost two days."

"I've taken down time -"

Bones' lips twisted in amusement. "Down time, my ass. Christine told me you were waiting up by my bed." The amused twist softened. "So come to bed, Jim. For me."

That look was the one Bones used when every defense had fallen away, and when he looked like that, Jim could deny him nothing.

A few moments later, gently tucked into the bed that wasn't quite big enough for two grown men, with the warmth of Bones' body radiating against Jim's skin, Jim felt himself starting to relax for the first time since he'd been so sure that Bones had died in front of him. Bones was lying on his back, and Jim was curled slightly on his side, facing the man he'd almost lost. He listened to the soft rhythm of Bones' breathing in the dark room. Brushed his fingertips along Bones arm. Rested his hand on Bones' chest to feel the slow rise and fall... It was intensely reassuring. He might have thought the man was asleep, but he knew Bones better than that.

"Bones?"

"Yeah?"

"Could we take a holoportrait of... well... us?"

For a moment, Bones' chest was still beneath his hand, then it shook faintly in what Jim knew was a chuckle. "Yeah, kid. We can do that."

"Thanks." Jim sighed and settled deeper under the covers. Then he frowned. "I was thinking that I should requisition a larger bed next time we're in spacedock."

Bones made a soft grumbling sound. "You'd just sprawl all over me anyway."

Jim felt his face flush red in the darkness. "Probably." He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. "You sure you don't blame me?"

A hand touched Jim's cheek, then carded fingers through his hair. "No. Of course not."

He knew it was true, but it was still hard to believe. "Bones, could we -"

"Jim," Bones said firmly, undercutting Jim's tentative, half-formed question. "How about letting an injured man get some sleep, huh? I'll still be here in the morning."

"Oh. Okay." Jim re-settled his head against his pillow, trying to let the slow rhythm of Bones' breathing soothe him so he could forget his last thought. It wasn't something he could ask. He just needed to let it go, and be comforted by the fact that Bones was here, and alive, and would still be alive and here in the morning. Jim was almost asleep when he felt Bones move, just slightly. A hand covered his own, clenching it lightly to Bones' chest, and giving it a warm squeeze.

The sensation of a warm, strong hand gripping his own was a striking contrast to how Bones' hand had gone limp in grasp, and Jim bit down on his tongue. It was too much, and Jim couldn't hold back his thought any longer. Although he was almost nauseous at the memory that he'd been the one to order Bones into danger in the first place, and despite the fact the he knew he'd have to do it again someday, he needed to ask - _beg_ - the impossible.

"Bones... don't leave me."

There was a soft sigh, and Bones lifted up his hand and pressed it gently to his lips. Then, without words, he gave the only possible answer as he held Jim's hand tightly and didn't let go.

~FIN~

**Notes:** If you enjoyed the story, please leave me a quick comment to let me know! Also, take a look at my other fics. There's lots more to read!


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